In various protocols and fabrics (e.g., in-die interconnect (IDI), Ring, cable management interface (CMI), Intel On-Chip System Fabric (IOSF), AXI, etc.), the data bus is accompanied by a byte enable bus to allow partial write operation. The size of the byte enable bus is equal to the number of bytes in the data bus. The data transmitted over the byte enable bus increases the number bits to be transmitted (e.g., 12.5% increase). However, system architecture may require that the number of signals or pins to be reduced without compromising the transmission bandwidth.